Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

We touched down in Sydney this afternoon after our whirlwind tour of Perth for the past week. We're all exhausted and poor James has to go to work tomorrow morning, but a few things of interest before I collapse into bed:

1.) The wedding was gorgeous
2.) We had a blast because Harriet was put down by Nana without any dramas
3.) Harriet has been continuing her brilliant sleeping throughout the trip
4.) Only one day of real issue (unfortunately coincided with a trip to our friends' house for the night)
5.) No real photos of note because I was too busy running around
6.) Busy busy busy all day and night

So we're back home - tired, broke and happy.

Will post more, obviously with photos, during the week. Now it's time to crash into bed.

Most Beautiful Girl Ever

I dare you... in fact I double dare you, to not think that this child is the most beautiful girl you have ever seen. Double click on this photo and see just how beautiful she is. My God, sometimes it just hurts to look at her, she is so gorgeous. For some unknown reason however this photo is decidedly more dull than it is on my screen, so you'll just have to trust me that the colours are amazing.

I was going to come in and post about the five things Harriet does that drive me crazy, to act as an antidote to the love and ravings of adoration that I usually post in here. She really is a normal toddler and can drive me to distraction. But then I uploaded this photo from Kristy's wedding yesterday and just can't find the heart to do it. She was a dream child over the weekend; only started to get upset about the car trip twenty minutes away from our destination, sat quietly throughout KJ and Nick's ceremony, ran around all afternoon and wore herself out, slept solidly ALL NIGHT (*cough* firsttimeever*cough*), then helped me rescue a fledgling bird this afternoon, cut the grass with her scissors, ate three mangoes and was basically wonderful.

Have I mentioned before that I love this girl?

Nuptial Trilogy

We're off to the first in our set of three weddings tomorrow morning. This one only involves us travelling to Wollongong, but as any of you with children know, there is a particular brand of travel that kicks in at about 18mths. There are the favourite toys, the favourite books, the monitor, the blanket, the spare clothes. I'm lucky to remember to throw in another shirt to wear for myself (apologies to anyone I stand next to tomorrow, the smell tends to fade after a while). The big plane trip next week is going to be interesting, however.

Below I've posted some photos of Harry enjoying her ring sling. Now she's obviously an Ergo girl, but the size difference is a little more noticeable in the ring sling. She just loves to cuddle up in there lately, despite her obvious inability to fit in the thing. It reminded me of how much she hated having her feet all squished up when she was a baby...which made me look for an early sling photo...which lead me to compare them...which made me want to share how different she is in these photos! Amazing what a couple of years can do! Look at her little jaundiced face in there...awwww.... :o)

Rhyming

We just thought we'd put the question out there for other parents of two year olds. Does anyone else's child get right into rhyming? For about the past two months Harriet has eagerly recognised words that rhyme. She says, for example, "Use glue on the shoe" and then "Glue, shoe, that rhymes" and have a little laugh at it. Sometimes she even makes up nonsensical words to rhyme with something. She was in the car one afternoon listening to Bear Hunt (the love is dwindling a little, thank goodness, although now Justine Clark haunts my brain) and when she sang out mud, she piped up with "Gud! Mud! That rhyme Mama, that rhyme!" and started laughing hysterically!

We were just wondering if other children do it or if it's a peculiarly Harriet thing to do?

OH! And this morning she wrote a 'd' quite deliberately! I have to take a photo of it, it's on the back of a sultana packet, as all good masterpieces should be.

And she has become quite interested in counting threes of things. For a while there if there was more than two of anything she would point and count "One...two..." and the first two things and then just spiel off "threefourfivesixseveneightnineten" no matter how many actual objects there were. But for the past couple of days she is now consciously counting out three objects and loves to do it too.

Ok, just a quick update. We survived the weekend of being ultra-busy and came out of the other end still upright (Harry also doesn't say 'up' or 'in' - she says "upright" and "inside" every time. Even Dr. Seuss is 'Fox Inside Socks'). This photo shows Harry and Papa sporting apparel from our two big outings (Newtown Festival and the Walk Against Warming) as they slump collapsed at our third port in the storm, Crazy Uncle Ian's house. My computer didn't fare so well, having a major breakdown and demanding a complete overhaul and an external hard drive ASAP, which we'll have to work on - read: James is on the job.

Tiny Hippos

* Harriet didn't know what noise hippos make. Neither did James. So he suggested that Harriet think of a noise that they might make. Harry came up with her own 'hippo noise'. It sort of sounds like someone with a stutter trying to say "bell", or even someone very drunk trying to French kiss the air. But anyway, that's what noise hippos make.

* And don't go around telling Harriet that hippo is actually an abbreviation of hippopotamus. Because you are WRONG, yes, flatly, outrightly, wrong. There is a hippopotamus in one of her books, but the stuffed animal on her bed is a hippo and never the twain shall meet.

* Plus if you ever want to catch a hippo, just ask Harry to do it for you. Apparently they are everywhere. She can find them just by plucking thin air. In fact, on request she can even find four or five hippos no matter where she sits or stands. The girl is like the HippoMaster. Today she was even throwing hippo after hippo off the edge of a ferry.

* "You don't know why" - is said reasonably often each day (read: at least once an hour). For example tonight she was in the bath with her doll Boomer (not Doll, because Doll can't get wet. So Doll sits on teh side adn waves hello). She had Boomer on her back and Harry said "Boomer doing different backstroke" {pause} "You don't know why". {insert parental laughter here}. Although the "not knowing why" can become a little tedious when it is repeated after the same story time and time again, it is still pretty cute. I just had a thought - I wonder how many times I have used the word cute in this blog?

* "You don't know that [man/girl/lady/boy]'s name" - said randomly as we walk along the street, waiting in line, sitting in a cafe, playing in the park, you get the picture.

* Her logic is pretty flawless. This afternoon she talked us through the complete reasoning behind not eating her noodle off the floor (by the way I have no problem with her eating food off the floor, so this is all from her). "You can't eat that from the floor. Noodle on the floor, the floor is yucky, no pick it up and eat it because noodle is now yucky" - this was said quite intently to Doll so that she was kept up to speed with the etiquette of eating out. But generally Harriet knows the reasons why and why not for everything.

* "You very excited, you don't know why" - This has been a recent addition to the repertoire. Today she was on the seat on the ferry jumping up adn down and yelling with happiness and then saying this. Hmmmm...can anyone say 'happy flash'?

* And continuing on the 'like mother like daughter' theme, we were at playgroup on Thursday adn at the end they have singing. Harry sat through all the songs and the last one is always 'Twinkle Twinkle' with Colleen. Colleen sang it and said "Thank you" but Harriet was already yelling out "Der Glumph! Der Glumph!". Colleen laughed and said "I've never had a request before". Now anyone who has been with me to a Bernie gig can only begin to understand just how proud this made me feel (and I wanted to just drag her along right then and there to the Rose but of course it's only filled with drunks and pokies on a Thursday morning...and a Wednesday night as well but that's another story).

Not too sure what last weekend's no-sleep issue was about, but it may have to do with her big jump in development this week. She also has her last molar coming through on the lower left - yippee! We were out with friends at the museum on Wednesday and she was a bit upset about what the other girl was doing to her and she said to me "You angry about what [girl is] doing". I was impressed that she had the ability to not only recognise her emotions but to verbalise them in a moment of calm to me as well.

She also has started wanting to 'write' when at the whiteboard. Yesterday she drew a "road" with "ends" (ie: a horizontal line with two squiggly bits at each end of it). Then she drew letters "sitting on road", as if she was writing them on lined paper! Of course her 'letters' were just little squiggles but she said when drawing a 'B' - "Buh...circle....straight line...THERE!". Errr...maybe not quite, but I was still surprised that she knew the components of drawing the letters when we haven't talked about that at all.

Speaking of 'maybe' she also loves to put maybe at the end of sentences. "You put this on Doll maybe"..."You eat this out in playroom maybe"...usually said with an earnest nodding of the head at the completion of the statement as if she expects us to prevent her from doing said activity or something. Quite odd.

Still, just like Bryn it turns out, Harriet's favourite activity is still to dip her finger into the margarine tub. She can manage a pretty hefty swipe too. Apparently it's "much nicer with whole thing Mama". Riiiighhhhttt.

And we have had a pronoun breakthrough! Yay! Just today she has started to use "me" and "I" correctly; in an intermittent fashion for sure, but correctly nonetheless.

I'm writing this because even though I should be PPing, my computer has decided to have a little attack and I am having to reinstall CS3 and Bridge. *sigh* And even then I'm not assured of my problem being solved. So I'm not even procrastinating, I'm really truly unable to do any work. You trust me don't you? And tomorrow is Newtown Festival plus Walk Against Warming so it's going to be a big one and I'm already sleepy. I should really go to bed, which is how I end a lot of these blog posts. One day I'll sit down to write a well composed, thought-out, insightful entry. And everyone will be amazed. Not least of all me.

Edited to say that I have now tried four times to fix the spacing in this post but it keeps reverting back to this odd thing, with no paragraph breaks where appropriate, so apologies for the difficult reading nature of this entry towards the end.

Long Time No Post

Ok I admit, no posting for a while, but you know that means we've been busy.

This is just a quick post before I head off to bed. After the weekend we've had I just have little energy to post much to be honest.

Harry slept from 6-10pm on Saturday night and...well...that was IT. Until Sunday night at 6pm. Yep, you read correctly. Plus I had two shoots on Sunday so I was definitely feeling a little less than creative!

Here's Harriet very focused on spreading her "mites" on bread at the cafe. That extra lump in the left hand corner is Doll in her 'Ergo'.

I promise once we're back in the land of the living and I can get on top of my PPing I will be back in here to write a nice long entry about Miss H and her crazy, sweet ways.